


My Fair Lady

by Tah the Trickster (TahTheTrickster)



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Fae & Fairies, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-22
Updated: 2018-02-22
Packaged: 2019-03-22 17:13:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13768764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TahTheTrickster/pseuds/Tah%20the%20Trickster
Summary: I knew better than to trust any of the good women of the hills. I'd known more than a few folks back home who'd wound them up before, purely by accident. I had no intention of ending up like they did. There were older things in this world than most men realized, and I was most certainly not about to engage with one of them.





	My Fair Lady

I suspected her the instant she came by my office.

Tall and slender; fair in complexion; startlingly bright blue eyes. She'd seemed such an oddity that it made the vellus hairs on the nape of my neck stand on end. It had been her eyes, if anything, that'd nearly given her away. She was several years my junior—in theory—but her eyes were aged in a way far beyond her years. Far beyond any amount of time that trauma alone could provide.

She introduced herself, though I could see her ID badge from my desk. The celebrated prodigy Doctor Ziegler. Of course. Commander Reyes had informed me of her impending employment offer a few weeks ago. He'd hardly needed to expound upon her accomplishments before her arrival. I'd've had to be buried under a rock not to hear of her already.

No family to speak of, from the ongoing Crisis. No particularly close friends, either, from her intense studies and work ethic. Convenient.

Nobody to question regarding her baffling projects that  _ shouldn't work. _

Don't get me wrong. She was brilliant, there was no doubt about that. I'd read all her papers. They were absolutely fascinating. Simply ingenious. And everything she wrote was, in theory, completely sound. And at least thirty percent of it shouldn't have worked.

Ziegler cleared her throat softly, drawing my attention back up. She smiled; too wide, too polite to be genuine. Her hand was held out before me, expectant. "And might I have your name, please?"

I stared at her hand for a long moment before drawing my gaze up to those pristine blue eyes. "Doctor Moira O'Deorain."

"Pleased to meet you."

I did not deign to shake her hand.

* * *

 

I witnessed one of her clinical trials, once.

I'd watched as the fresh cadaver was brought before her in the operating theatre.

I believe I'd been the only one to notice the glimmer of gold that gilt her hands as she injected the nanites into the man's heart, and again as he jolted up, gasping, eyes wide and rolling in his skull in a panic.

"What do you think you're playing at?" I hissed at her that night in her laboratory.

"Pardon?" She sounded perfectly perplexed, though she merely raised a single brow at my fearful anger.

"You know what I mean. I saw your hands."

Her smile was unnerving in its perfection. "Doctor O'Deorain, you wound me! Surely you know by now my nanites give off a yellowish glow during activation. Are you certain you simply didn't notice the reflection?"

I bit my tongue nearly hard enough to bleed. No, of course, I couldn't be  _ certain _ of that, and she damn well knew it.

"You may have everyone else fooled," I whispered harshly, "but I know  _ better _ ."

Ziegler's eyes glimmered with mirth. Or perhaps... something else. "Do you, Doctor?"

Those eyes would be my downfall, I could tell that then.

"I do," I said, yanking my gaze away from hers. "You  _ will _ slip up eventually. You know that."

"I'm sure I know nothing of the sort."

* * *

 

I pored over hundreds of thousands of pages of Ziegler's research and designs. The nanotechnology she'd developed was incredible. There was no doubt about that. It was simply brilliant, far beyond anything anyone had ever accomplished before.

But there was nothing written down regarding how they might restore life to an individual, regardless of how recently deceased. And somehow... somehow nobody else seemed to question that fact.

They shouldn't have worked.

* * *

 

I finally caught her in the field.

A soldier had been blown nearly clean in half. It'd killed him instantly, his face still twisted into mortal terror at the sight of the incoming shrapnel. For all accounts, dead. Dead and untreatable.

Until, moments later, I rounded a corner and saw Ziegler crouched over him, staff on the ground, hands lit in golden light as she drew shapes and figures in the air, knitting his obliterated body back into being.

I backed hastily away, my boots clattering on the debris, and Ziegler's gaze snapped up at me just as the man began to stir. I'm sure she noticed the panic in my gaze at my dawning realization, but her expression remained altogether neutral.

I had to get her away from me.

* * *

"Doctor O'Deorain, this is childish," Ziegler scolded from the doorway, arms folded over her chest, a tiny pout tugging at her lips.

"Necessary precautions," I huffed, examining the heavy line of salt that I'd poured across the threshold for breaks. A line which, I noticed with some satisfaction, she had yet to cross.

"This is  _ my _ laboratory," Ziegler pointed out, hands falling to her hips. "I must insist you not meddle in my affairs."

"This is a shared laboratory," I said with a growl, "and your affairs are what I take issue with. I will have no part of your—your  _ witchcraft. _ " I spat out the word with as much venom as I could muster.

Her lips parted in a broad grin. The sight of it made me shiver. There was something feral about that grin. Something wild. Something older than I could even fathom. "Now, now. I'm sure we both know full well I have participated in no  _ witchcraft _ whatsoever."

A ball of panic rose in my throat, despite her confirmation of what I'd already suspected. I tried to swallow it down—failed and simply nodded instead. "You're one of the fair folk," I croaked out, fingering the iron nail in my coat pocket for safety. "And I'll not have anything to do with you. Get out at once."

"I'm gainfully employed," Ziegler said dryly, eyes twinkling with amusement. "And you hardly have the authority to remove me from my position."

"I'll expose you for what you really are," I threatened, backing away from the doorway to put some distance between us. "I'll—I'll report you to Gabriel, I'll—"

"And tell him what? That your coworker is a  _ faerie? _ " The mocking in her voice made me grit my teeth. "You're not being rational. Let me in and we can talk."

"Not on your bloody life. I know your type."

Ziegler raised a brow, still lingering at the other side of the line of salt. "Do you? What, precisely, have I done to warrant such a response?"

Nothing. That was just it. She'd done  _ nothing _ to merit my ire.

But I knew better than to trust any of the good women of the hills. I'd known more than a few folks back home who'd wound them up before, purely by accident. I had no intention of ending up like they did. There were older things in this world than most men realized, and I was most certainly  _ not _ about to engage with one of them.

Particularly not in a fucking professional environment.

"Moira," Ziegler drawled, leaning against the doorway, half-pouting. "I have work to do."

"You owe me an explanation first."

Her fair brows shot up. "I  _ owe _ you, do I?"

My stomach twisted uncomfortably at the tone she picked up, though I couldn't quite place what it was. Offense? That would be a mistake. Panic crept up my throat. I backed up without meaning to. Blood rushed in my ears.

A slow smile crept onto Ziegler's expression. It wasn't nice.

"Moira." There was a subtle edge of command to her voice. "Let me in.  _ Now. _ "

I already had the broom in hand before my mind caught up with my actions, and was already sweeping the salt from the doorway when I began fighting my own body, helpless, terror sparking in my gut and spreading with all the speed and destruction of a brush fire. Her smile broadened to a grin, revealing the slant of inhuman fangs at the molars, and she walked easily past me, taking a seat comfortably at her desk.

"Let's get back to work,  _ shall we? _ " Her tone was that of a suggestion. The haste with which my body moved me back to my own desk and dropped me roughly into the chair told me it was not.

I didn't get a damn thing done.

* * *

 

I couldn't eat for days.

I took a leave of illness.

I couldn't be in the same room as that...  _ that. _ I simply couldn't.

My fingers still burned where I'd fished the iron nail out of my pocket, a scarlet line across the pads.

Terror coated my tongue like bile.

_ What is she playing at? _

The fair folk didn't  _ control _ people like that. Not that I knew of. Manipulated them, sure. Tricked them, of course. Made their lives miserable, repeatedly.

They couldn't put their control over people like that.

But she had.

* * *

I'd been foolish. Foolish and enraptured by those eyes the color of a clear June sky, eyes that left an afterimage on your vision as though you'd been staring into the sun itself.

It was the first rule in dealing with the good gentlemen of the hills, and I'd broken it immediately.

I should've known better. I knew every one of the common tricks, and I'd fallen for the most obvious. The most common.

The most dangerous.

* * *

 

She'd smiled when she met me.

She'd given me the name she'd been gifted at birth, when she'd been slipped into a human's home, the baby vanished for the rest of its life.

"Doctor Angela Ziegler," she'd introduced herself, smiling, knowing that  _ that _ name was not  _ her _ name, knowing that full-damn-well.

She'd smiled when she met me, given me a name just to call her by. Deceptively human.

She'd held out a hand. I'd thought to shake. It was expectant.

She'd held out a hand to me in supplication.

A request I hadn't understood.

"And might I have your name, please?"

And like a damn fool, I'd  _ given _ it to her.

**Author's Note:**

> lightly inspired by that one tumblr post that i cant fkn find now


End file.
